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Thursday, June 10, 2010

Caste census in India

A caste wise head count will be conducted from June to September 2011 after the regular enumeration is over. It seeks to balance the demand by OBCsatraps for a caste count with the fear that doing so would affect the accuracy of figures as caste groups try to inflate their numbers in the hope of gains like bigger quotas.

The result of the caste-wise count will be tallied with the regular census and the National Population Register. The OBC lobbies are keen to frame their round of reservation politics based on caste numbers as they are confident that backwards are a good deal more than 50% of the population. This can lead to demands to amend the Supreme Court ceiling of 50% on quotas.

The flip side is that it could also spur calls for splitting reservations for sub-castes to the detrimental of the 'elite' among the Mandal Castes. This is going to be the first caste census in eighty years since the first count in 1931.